Monday, April 19, 2010

Cleggophilia Has Given Me Writer's Block

Today I am at the London Book Fair. And I'm glad. Because it means I won't have to think about an election campaign I am already bored with and don't really want to write about. Not because of the Cleggophilia or the apparent rise of the LibDems, but because I have got a dose of writer's block. Try as I might yesterday, I couldn't summon up an original thought in my head, and this morning's no better. Nothing has happened over the weekend of any consequence anyway, beyond more polls showing the LibDem bubble hasn't burst yet.

The only thought that really strikes me is this: if a political nut like me is bored with the election, what on earth are normal people feeling?

really? I think it may be that you can't find a way to spin it into a good thing for the Tories. And, being just over two weeks to the election, whether or not it's a bubble is all but irrelevant. For those of us with out as much of a vested interest, this is the first election in a long time where it actually IS exciting, because for first time in a long time, we could haves cabinet made up of members from any of the main three parties.

How do others feel? To be honest Iain I am fighting in a safe Tory seat and reaction on the streets is fantastic - they can now see that voting for the party they want, not the one they think will always win, is plausible. I think this is a really exciting time in politics. But then I am a Lib Dem.

The question is how many normal people will realise ?, because the more time I spend on reading blogs, the more time I am coming up against the same people and most of them are far from normal. So as long as your immediate family will support you, don't worry about the rest of us, most of whom seem to spend all their time massaging their egos

This is what happens when the power is some where else. You end up with a beauty contest. After all Dave's changes he is back to just over 30%. Even Haigh managed that in 2001. Of course it will not last. Dave after all is a fighter not a quitter and may bounce back to take a large minority of seats in our regional council election.

It was boring for a while but for me the first TV debate has energised it beyond expectations. The media is concentrating at the moment on the perosnality aspects - and they are important. But I think that the possibility of the three main parties being within a few percentage points of one another on polling day is a huge boost to democracy. Surely if the outcome is uncertain more people will vote - and more will take an interest. The Conservatives wanted a quiet campaign where “Do you want five more years of Gordon Brown” and repeating the “Change” mantra would do the job for them. Clegg has burst this bubble and it won’t re-form! Now Dave has not only to sell change but he needs to say why the Tory brand of change is the right one for an elector to choose. He is no longer Obama (if he ever was) – the danger is that he might now be seen as McCain!

You're disappointed because nothing of great moment has happened as far as policy is concerned.

The public is entertained and fascinated by the Rise of Clegg. There is that thrill/dread of what it might mean.

If we're smart we won't attack Clegg: let Brown do that. Negative campaigning, in the political or business world, turns off the very people at whom it is aimed (while the insiders cackle with glee at how clever they have been.)

We need to do just one thing: destroy Brown's reputation with the public as a financial wizard. The message should be clear, concise and simple: "Gordon took the healthiest economy in Europe and destroyed it. Another 5 years would bankrupt Britain."

That immediately undermines his "Tories do cuts" argument and gives him nowhere to go.

The rest of our message - 95% of it - must be relentlessly positive about how we will make things better.

The 'normal people' are feeling excited about something different actually happening for a change. I honestly don't see how a political anorak can find this election boring, when history is in the making.

For 24 hours after the debate I had to leave the radio and tv off because I felt so engorged by it all. Broadcasters are so strung up and hyperactive its impossible to listen to them for longer than five minutes at a time. The election has degenerated into a horse race. Its all about who's winning and who is placed where. We hear very little now about policies and nothing grown-up about anything important. The leaders have all turned into Tony Blair-type ham actors. No gesture, word or action is natural, unconscious or believable.

The most extreme of all is Gordon Brown. Who in their right mind would ever vote for Mandelson or Campbell or Whelan? But it is they who tell Brown "Act like us. Speak like us. Do like us." (Become repellant and unelectable like us). Its absolutely appalling that politicians who are aspiring PMs cannot function without the aid of an army of useless hangers-on. Who in God's name decided that new age body language "experts" were a prerequisite for an election. Its like saying to someone "You walk funny" and then watching them become self-conscious and unable to walk naturally.And then there were all those cringeworthy "Bob the Builder" type stories they'd learnt off by heart lat time round. Good grief. Who told them that was a good idea?We're bankrupt and all politicians can think of doing is putting on a third rate theatrical production and then telling us who deserves an Oscar.

I agree with Paddy Briggs. Putting aside one's own personal preferences this is undoubtedly the most interesting election since 1997 and the possibility of a three way split in the vote is something we haven't seen since before the war.

Of course if I were a Tory who had been looking forward to a coronation with that sense of entitlement that only a Tory can have, then I would probably be feeling sick to my stomach right now.

Gloating aside, I still see a Tory majority as the most likely outcome. Previous Liberal surges have always ended up hurting Labour. Why? Because possible Labour voters flirting with the Liberals are more likely to cross over to the Liberals whereas Tory voters ultimately remember what side their bread is buttered.

You can already see in the media the co-ordination between the Murdoch press and Tory Central Office with repeated attacks on Clegg's character and policies. It is also likely that Clegg will demonstrate the least gravitas at the foreign affairs debate this weekend. However, people are so fed up that maybe just maybe, traditional theories will go out of the window and that uncertainty is what makes this election the most interesting one in my lifetime.

ordinary people are very excited because at last their voice counts.....they are going to vote for that nice bloke who isn't a politician but somehow got invited onto that britain's got politicians show and did so well playing the spoons or whistling jungle impressions or whatever. bliss it was that dawn to be alive.......

@Oaddy-Briggs. The dishonesty of Libdems supporters like you and your name sake Paddy Ashdown is what they are interested is ministerial berths, trappings of power and perks. They will support Brown and Clegg is dishonest in saying voting Libdems is just that. Even the diehard Libdems do not think they will win outright majority. Brown it will be for the next 5 years and he will trow 3/4 ministries to Clegg and co. Can any one imagine otherwise, given the voting record of Libdems supporting Brown in parliament? There will be change, yes, Clegg and co will be ministers under Brown.

Let's support the Lib Dems and get Brown back in with a minority govt so low that he is helpless. There is no way a control freak like Gordon will cede any power to Clegg and even if he did, it will not take long for them to fall out.

Once the country realises it has been diddled a vote of no confidence will get a fresh election by Xmas - and a better result.

A 'Clegg' (or rather a 'Klegg') is the blight sunny spring days in many parts of Norway.

The biting little pest lives in or close to accumulations of animal dung (preferring bull to other - ahem!! - deposits)until it spots an unwary passer by to get its teeth stuck into. It becomes increasingly difficult to shake off once its got hold of you....

@Jabba the Cat said...The funniest part is the ongoing downward trend for the LibDims in the polls. Hopefully that will translate solidly into even more seat loses at future elections.

April 07, 2009 12:45 AM------

@martin day said...LD's = LOL

Cable get's polite and uninterpretted good coverage because he is like a harmless old grandfather.

The LD's on the otherhand are a joke of the highest oder and President Obama's refusal to be entertained by Clegg speaks volumes.

The LD's are doomed - DOOMED at the next election. They will be in a Yellow Taxi placed inside the Labour Coffin!

April 07, 2009 5:54 PM------

@martin day said...The Liberal Democrats might as well give up nationwide as they are doomed - DOOMED at the next election! Clegg is the invisible man when he is not imatating NEIL KINNOCK!

April 17, 2009 5:57 PM------

@ILLIBERAL DEMOCRATS said...I think the thing that showed it was not a good week was a former Liberal Democrat leader been given grief on QT! That shook the pious Liberal Democrats - even when they have done wrong they think that they should not be fingered.

Huhne, Ming, Clegg, Cable - they have all sone stupid things with their expenses. Indeed that bloke with the Mirrors, Goldsworthy and George may well cost the LD's seats. Huhne was gone anyway but his ranting and angry man reaction when caught said it all on CH4!

The LD's have been part of the car crash this week not spectators.

Some Pompous Liberal Democrats claim incumbancy will save them. I think they have blown that this week!

From Collins' dictionary:cleg n. another name for a horsefly, esp. one of the genus Haematopota [C15: from Old Norse kleggi]

Horseflies are just as irritating here as in Scandinavia. But the midges of northern Norway and Iceland are in a class of their own. As my father used to say, they are so large than when you kill them you can use them as armchairs.

What are normal people feeling? Elation Iain, elation in the realisation that for the first time in living memory the election won't be contested by two barely varying shades of the same colour shit.

But I guess it must be tough being a Tory biased political commentator right now, evidently you've found zero way of spinning the situation to your parties favour, instead deciding to throw your toys from the pram and declare yourself 'bored' with the whole election.

If this travel chaos continues do you think the election result could be legally challenged? There are figures of as many as 200,000 people unable to return to Britain. These people may miss the chance to vote...

I think a lot of political pundits have become somewhat disinterested in the election because the first television debate has (momentarily at least) changed their rules of engagement.

The Westminster Village (to which I respectfully suggest the more popular blogs are a huge part) have become so disconnected from the average guy on the street that they simply do not understand how to respond to what happened in the TV debate. 9.9m of us ordinary plebs watched the plucky outsider be himself on national television, whilst the more established and well known leaders looked out of touch, awkward and ever so slightly embarrassing. They looked like they represent everything we have come to despise in politics...over-rehearsed, disconnected and unbearably bitchy.

I am a Conservative Party member and a fully paid up member of the Team Cameron fan club. I love everything we are doing with the big society, love the Blond fixation, love our education, welfare, healthcare, housing, Europe, economic, immigration and third sector policies. It is a positive and needed message that Cameron is correct to focus on at the expense of going negative. That wold get him nowhere. I have also however worked in New Zealand for NZ National and the simple fact of the matter is that Nick Clegg has a bit of the normal bloke persona John Key has in spades. I remain unconvinced that Cameron has the same umbilical cord to the hearts and minds of ordinary people such as you and I. He has 2 debates to prove me wrong. Resorting to baseball caps is not an option!!!!

If we do end up with a Lib-Lab coalition government, I don't think it would last very long. Certainly not with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. If Brown is forced to invite Clegg and Cable into the government how on earth could he work with them ? He's had enough problems working with Alastair Darling and his own people. The mobiles would be flying about at furious rate. I feel that eventually there would have to be another election (perhaps with a form of PR) and all this uncertainty will damage the economy further.

The Labour Party made three attempts, that we know about, to ditch Gordon Brown. He has put the UK in hock for generations to come. Any outcome that allows him to cling to power would be a catastrophe for the country.I left the UK in 2001 despairing of life in the socialist paradise. I live in minority-Tory Canada which is not perfect. But I thank my lucky stars every day that the PM is not borrowing money like a drunken sailor and steering us onto the rocks. RLT

I would have to agree with most of your posters here: this has become a fascinating election.

Like most, I have no idea what coalitions, compromises or outright victories may or may not emerge post-election but one thing that can be said with a greater degree of certainty is that we are witnessing another stage in the long-term implosion of the Labour Party as a political force. Now that really is exciting.

Also, this is a good election to lose. Do you remember Neil Kinnock's anger at Labour Party council workers "scuttling around Liverpool in taxis" handing out redundancy notices to their workforce in 1985?

Well, this is the same writ large on a national canvas. Let the Labour Party be seen clearly as the incompetents forced to clean up the economic horror story they created. Do you honestly want to be seen as the party who arrives in power and is forced to impose savage cuts from 2010 for the best part of a decade? No, stuff them. Let Labour win now and die later. And thank God for the Lib Dems who, by possibly keeping the Conservatives out of power for a while yet, may aid that process.

Thank you Nick. Thank you Lib Dems. Thank you for your shallow televisual appeal. This country is forever in your debt – so to speak.

Just concentrate on that £2.4m of fraudsters monies that the Lib-Dem's accepted, and Cleggie boy's comment that was a long time ago.They have made no reparations and the those defrauded have received no compensation.BUT, as it the Lib-Dem's with their whiter than and holier than attitudes it perfectly allright. Which also gives them the right to carp about Ashcroft, who didn't stel his money and gives it the party.Let Micheal Brown's name be the first question that is asked of the Lib-Dems, who i believe is still on the run from justice

For what it is worth I am not a "LibDem supporter". I will be voting to re-elect my MP, Vince Cable, as I suspect will a clear majority of those who vote here in Twickenham. If I lived somewhere else I could see myself voting for a good Labour candidate, an independent, a Green or even a Conservative (Rory Stewart would get my vote and probably Ken Clarke).

What I am for is real not synthetic chnage to our electoral system and to the grotesquely adverserial style of modern British politics.

You have writers block because you are depressed. You are depressed because if things stay as they are with the polls then we get more Broon and doom and no Conservative government. Also you have come to realise the British electorate have bovine intelligence and no amount of exhortation is going to make the voters make their voting decisions based on reason or common sense. To win an election you have to tell people what they want hear not what they need to hear. If you try to take the debate above the level of X Factor or Eastenders then you will lose the concentration of the average voter and their interest.

Face up to it Labour with their education policy have managed to reduce the intelligence and knowledge of the nation. With their socialism they have bound a large proportion of the nation to the state and so socialism has won at the expense of civil liberties and economic competence.

When an ideology has totalitarian tendencies and is given any position of power that power will be subverted to propagate that ideology and will amass more power. So it has been with Labour in government. The electorate know something is amiss but being politically ignorant do not quite know what that is, they seek an alternative and they are choosing the Lib-Dems not realising they are jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Speaking as a political nut who is amazed a route has opened up for electoral and constitutional reform, I can't understand why you'd be bored. Real change is possible, whether it actually comes about or not (dirty tricks on the rise - from the Right, surprise surprise).

I was bored with this election campaign sometime around January 4th. When Brown finally called it I was completely turned off. I didn't tune in to the debate and if Cleggomania does take hold the that's perhaps a phase we have to go through before people wake up to the fact that there is no Obama-esue figure who can save us. We have a deeply corrupted system of government which has not been openly reformed since 1832. It does need radical (in the true sense of the word) reform and I can't see that happening until the situation gets desperate - which of course will not happen while voters believe that the answer lies in the rag-tag army of never-wozzers that make up the Liberal Democrat party.

Come now, Iain. If the Tory procession most people (myself included) predicted had come to pass, then you wouldn't be calling it "boring". Yet objectively it would be a little dull and anticlimactic (as 1997 was in a way).

The Conservatives might well win it yet and if they do, might it not be all the sweeter (and more exciting) for you having faced this particular storm?

As a Lib Dem, I personally think this wave will probably break and roll back long before May 6th. But it's hard to deny it's a wildcard that nobody really foresaw and which has produced a lot of real excitement - not just for Lib Dem supporters but for those who dislike/fear the yellow peril.

Honestly Iain, I can't believe that you're saying that the election is boring. I'm a political nut and a Tory too and this just has to be the most interesting development in my lifetime in a campaign.

In a normal campaign you tend to find that the exit polls and the entrance polls are about the same. No real movement. Here we have a real game changer... That's got to be interesting.

And, as a Tory, I had been concerned that the story pf the election was that the system was biased against us. Now with the Liberals leading in the polls projections show that they would be the smallest party (of the big three). That's got to be an argument for some form of re-calibration of the electoral system, hasn't it.

No, things have just got interesting and I'm really looking forward to Thursday.

Just in passing please read this, it's from todays open europe bulletin"AFP notes that the Commission's proposal for stronger EU control over member states' budgets, which would require national governments to submit their budgets to Brussels before taking them to their own parliaments, could be extended also to non-Eurozone members, EU Commissioner for economic and monetary affairs Olli Rehn has said." FT EUobserver European Voice EU Observer El País ABC Expansión Handelsblatt AFP

I see no analysis anywhere of whether the LD surge is worse for the Conservatives or Labour

I would hazard a guess that Labour has more to fear, both from an inability to turn out its core vote and also the opportunity for former Labour voters to register a protest against GB and still not vote Tory

Also, we might finally get a roll back of Labour's authoritarian legislation of the past 13 years and a much needed reform of the political system

Meanwhile among the Cleggmania in the media I don't see anyone commenting on the government party being rejected by 70-odd% of the electorate

I see Clegg coming a cropper this Thursday on foreign affairs. LD policy on the EU does not seem to chime with the elctorate (as evidenced by the rise of UKIP last year), and their defence policy is hazy to say the least

I think I'm with Bryan in his post above. I too have been bored with this year's election for months. It certainly feels as if the campaign has been going for months instead of the two weeks that have passed since Brown named the date. If the Lib Dems actually had a realistic chance of winning the 326 seats necessary for a majority I might be able to muster some enthusiasm, but that's not going to happen. It doesn't help that this election's outcome has been pretty much a foregone conclusion for months - a Lib Dem/New Labour coalition.

Boring? Ah, most people (me included) initially didn't get the outbreak of Dale humour! Yup, agree its most the most dramatic, surprising and utterly unpredictable of the 10 elections I have been able to vote in. No-one knows what's going to happen, young people excited more than usual, media elite lost control (see Yelland in the Guardian today). Great on all counts. People might actually get what they want, rather than voting tactically or for an arbitrary two person shortlist for PM. Can't have that can we! Oh, and I also enjoyed the posting that suggested a conspiracy by all the media and the polling companies to fix the opinion polls. Hilarious! (By the way, new poll this pm has Lib Dems in second and +10.)

@Paddy Briggs :"For what it is worth I am not a "LibDem supporter". I will be voting to re-elect my MP, Vince Cable, as I suspect will a clear majority of those who vote here in Twickenham." What does the above mean if you vote Cable , you are either Libdem supporter/ Old Labour as Cable is a Libdem but really Old Labour. To those who read your posting, it is clear you are a LibDem supporter. I have no problem if people say so, except that I should point out that Brown is the outcome as Libdems cannot achieve an outright majority. Cable wants Brown ( despite his Mr Bean jibe as he was close to John Smith and have seen him in his days as Glasgow councillor)

Another way of saying that instead of a system where there is at least a chance of changing governments (from a coalition of views on the right to a coalition of views on the left and vice versa) we will have a system in which there will be no point in voting because the same political establishment will be permanently in power.

This would be a cause of rejoicing amongst the Lib-Lab establishment because the UK would in effect become something resembling a one party state.

This is how "ordinary" people have always felt about politics. It is so funny to watch the Westminster village (including the media) get so excited and stirred up by the election. They fail to notice that most people looking on are weary, unsure and most of all apathetic towards this bunch of dreary and uninspiring candidtates.